Flannery - Here on Earth a twin biography of the planet and the human race

A NEW BEGINNING

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First published in Australia by the Text Publishing Company 2010

First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2011

Copyright Tim Flannery, 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reproduce the following illustrations:

Charles Darwin: University College London. The sand walk: Ted Grant.

Alfred Russel Wallace: The Wallace Fund, George Beccaloni. The island of Ternate: Tim Flannery.

James Lovelock: Bruno Comby. Tim Flannery: Nick Rowley. Homo floresiensis and Elasmotherium sibiricum:

Peter Schouten. Telefol elders and long-beaked echidna: Tim Flannery. Wisent: Romanowa.

Pre Davids deer: Lily M. Atomic bomb cloud: United States Department of Defense.

Greenland icecap: NASA. Attine ants: Arpingstone.

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-1-84-614397-7

Tim Flannery is a writer, a scientist and an explorer. He has published over a dozen books including the award-winning bestsellers The Future Eaters, The Eternal Frontier and The Weather Makers. The 2007 Australian of the Year, Tim is Panasonic Professor in Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University, and is National Geographics representative in Australasia. He sits on the sustainability boards of Siemens and Tata Power and the board of WWF International, and from 2007 to 2010 he chaired the Copenhagen Climate Council. Tim lives on the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales.

To VJF, OMS and MH

This book is a twin biography of our species and our planet. At its heart lies an investigation of sustainabilitynot how we achieve it, but what it is. I have written it at a time when hope that humanity might act to save itself from a climatic catastrophe seems to be draining away. Yet I am not without hope, for I believe that as we come to know ourselves and our planet we will be moved to act. Indeed, provoking that action is the purpose of this book.

What is the nature of Earth? Is it akin to a cell, an organism or an ecosystem? How much energy does it require to operate? What is that energy used for, and how is it deployed? How flexible are Earths systems? Can they withstand severe challenges, and can their resilience and productivity be enhanced?

And what of us? Are we constituted by natural selection to be so selfish and greedy that were doomed to catastrophe? Or are there reasons to believe that we can overcome the problems confronting us, allowing our civilisation to continue? What of civilisation itself? What, precisely, is it?

These are some of the questions I attempt to answer in this book. Guiding me are the two great strands of evolutionary theoryreductionist science as epitomised by Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins, and the great holistic analyses of the likes of Alfred Russel Wallace and James Lovelock. Each pursues a truth that at first seems to be in opposition to the other, but in the enormous complexity that is our living planet they operate as necessary and complementary opposites. When viewed together, these Darwinian and Wallacean world views, as I call them, provide a convincing explanation of life as a wholeand of what sustainability entails.

Fifty thousand years after our ancestors left Africa, our species is entering a new phase. We have formed a global civilisation of unprecedented might, a civilisation that is transforming our Earth. We have become masters of technology, spinning energy from matter at will and withal realising the dreams of the alchemiststransforming one element into another. We have trod the face of the Moon, touched the nethermost pit of the sea, and can link minds instantaneously across vast distances. But for all that, its not so much our technology, but what we believe, that will determine our fate.

Today, many think that our civilisation is doomed to collapse. As I will show, such fatalism is misplaced. It derives in large part from a misreading of Darwin, and a misunderstanding of our evolved selves. Either such ideas will survive, or we will.

There are others who believe that endless growth is possible. In their imaginations only the fittest survive, and human intelligence will triumph over all. This optimism also derives from a misreading of Darwin, but it owes much as well to ignorance of the fundamentally important insights of Wallace and Lovelock. Despite their patently flawed nature, such foolishly optimistic ideas have now reigned largely unchallenged in western society for 150 years and have already led us far down the road to a dismal fate. Unless corrected, they may become a fatal flaw indeed.

Narrow horizons and short time frames are always misleading. Thats why its impossible to determine whether, even in the dramatic changes we see over a lifetime, were witnesses to a descent into chaos, or a profound revolution that will lead to a better future. A wider view, one that encompasses humanity over the millennia and the world over the aeons, is required if we are to discern the true path of our evolutionary trajectory. In writing this book Ive taken that long view, and, despite the challenges we now face, I feel optimisticfor ourselves, our children and our planet.

If we are to prosper, we must have hope, goodwill and understanding.

There is nothing conscious about lifes lethal activities.

P ETER W ARD 2009

W hatever each day held, Charles Darwin tried to set aside time for a stroll around a sand walk near his home, Down House, in Kent. Tradition has it that the sand walk was his thinking spacethe place where he sharpened his evolutionary theory, as well as the sentences that would so elegantly carry it into print. Consequently, the walk is regarded with reverence by many scientists, and when I made my first pilgrimage to Down House in October 2009 it was this place above all that I wished to see. After paying my respects to the great mans office and drawing room, I followed the signs to the walk. Its a little removed from the house and its enclosed gardens, and entering it one feels instantly transported from the ordered human world into the wider world of nature.